


you're with all you've ever wanted

by kagako



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blue Lions Route spoilers, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Build, Spoilers for Sylvix Support, Unresolved Romantic Tension, for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22818607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagako/pseuds/kagako
Summary: “Please, spare me your romantic sermons,” Felix hisses. “If this is just your way to prattle on about how you’ve looked at numerous women like that, don’t bother.”“I’ve only ever looked at one person like that,” Sylvain murmurs, and whether or not Felix heard him, he doesn’t find out until much, much later.-Felix and Sylvain through their supports, and more.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, background dimitri/f!byleth bc im me
Comments: 17
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first off, let me just say: happy birthday felix! i wanted to get the whole fic done in time, but i'm not even to their supports post timeskip, so i hope this will suffice, for now!
> 
> as per the tags, this does contain spoilers for blue lions route, as well as sylvain and felix's supports! ever since i took fates' leokumi supports and morphed them kinda into my own thing, i've wanted to do it again! i did kind of do that with my dimileth fic, but this is the first time since my leokumi fic i'm doing ALL of it, and i'm going a bit more in depth with it this time around.
> 
> shout out to all my friends who have been cheering me on as i write! chapter 2 is almost done, not quite, but i hope to get it done as soon as i can, especially since i'm posting the first chapter for felix's birthday!
> 
> so, as always, thank you for reading and please enjoy!
> 
> title from: clear skies by the strokes (bc i'm me)

Felix is sure the lands have been set ablaze when the Professor assigns him and Sylvain to stable duty for the week.

He freezes in his seat, and it must have been such a drastic change to his body language because he swears he hears Mercedes or Annette or maybe even the both of them laugh under their breath. Felix almost protests—after all, he had no desire to learn how to ride and it didn’t particularly align with his own personal goals, but she must have taken apart his entire demeanor, must have picked apart the thoughts running across his face, because when the Professor speaks up again, it’s like she plucks the words right from the front of his mind.

“I realize these tasks do not align with some of your goals,” she says ( _eerie,_ Felix thinks, struggling to keep his expression neutral). The Professor’s eyes skim around the room, and Felix wants to groan out loud, because her eyes pause on him before continuing about the room. “However, basics are basics, and there is no reason none of you should not learn the basics to any of these skills. Any skills come in handy, and as comrades, we must… ah, what is it…” her brow furrows in thought, and then there is a whisper from the front row, one that sounds much like the boar prince, and once again Felix has to restrain a groan. The Professor smiles the tiniest bit, a barely there curve of her lips, and says, “yes, that’s it. Lend a helping hand. Thank you.”

And so, Felix finds that every muscle in his body hurts with how much he is trying to control himself.

_It’s just a week,_ he tells himself, and he tries to be as reassuring about it as he can. _Only a week, Felix, it can’t be that bad._

It hadn’t occurred to Felix that the Goddess may have laughed at him.

The first few days go smoothly enough—Felix watches from the corner of his eye as Sylvain works, and he finds that more often than not, he must force himself to turn the other way, simply because he wasn’t sure what could possibly slip, or what the look on his face revealed, or how much his body language conveyed. _It’s just a week,_ Felix reminds himself. _It’s just a week. We spent a whole childhood together. The damage is already done and over with._ However, the thought does little to ease what anxieties haunt him, and by the time they are halfway over with their weekly task, Felix is settled on the very edge of _keeping it together._

To say the least: the last day does nothing to ease what stampede is raging in his chest.

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain says, easy and all too carefree. Felix pauses in his task, deliberate in the way he turns away from the horse he was caring for. Sylvain smiles—his usual, easy going, lopsided smile—and says, “You free?”

“ _Currently,_ no,” Felix tells him, voice on the verge of sarcasm, and raises the brush to smooth over the horse’s mane once more.

“C’mon, man, you know what I mean. After this, you definitely aren’t busy, right? I mean, we gotta stop by the classroom, but afterward, you’re not doing anything, are you?” Sylvain asks, dropping the saddle oil before making his way toward Felix. He watches as Felix tends to the horse carefully, watches as his hands all but smooth over the coat he had brushed. Sylvain feels something, here—warm, familiar, yet all at once, it is something he knows he should not touch upon. Instead of the numerous other things he wants to say, Sylvain says, perhaps a bit too strained, a bit too rushed, “let’s go find some girls to chat with, after this.”

Felix looks at him over his shoulder only to scowl at him. “Chat with them by yourself,” he snaps, knuckles turning white with how tightly he held the brush. “Can’t you talk about how much you want to hit up women after we get this done, and after I’m out of earshot? You’re doing nothing but interrupting our task. I want to get this over with and continue my training.”

“H-Hey, come on,” Sylvain says quickly. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t read Felix’s tone, and even if he couldn’t, the way his face had scrunched up says it all too loudly. Sylvain shifts from foot to foot, uneasy, and he isn’t too sure he likes the way Dorte the Horse is staring at him. “Don’t talk like that. How long have we known each other?”

Felix rolls his eyes, the words _how is that even relevant to any of this_ on the tip of his tongue, but what comes out is: “Long enough, if you ask me,” and then, something a little harsher, “we only know each other because of our parents’ friendship. I did _not_ have any say in it.”

Even as the worse leave his mouth, Felix has the unnerving feeling that perhaps this line of conversation was just as dangerous as the silence, just as dangerous as stealing glances at the guy when he wasn’t looking, when he wasn’t even aware.

A thought comes to Felix just as Sylvain smiles mischievously—one of, _but is he truly always unaware?_ But before he can process the thought, however, Sylvain speaks up.

“Is _that_ how it went?” Sylvain drawls, rubbing his chin before placing that same hand on his hip. “Huh. I remember it more like you always following me around.”

Felix, too, remembers all too well. It’s as if someone took his own memories from the back of his mind and replayed them right in front of his eyes as Sylvain speaks up again.

“Whenever there was something _wrong_ …” he starts, his smile a little softer, his eyes a little less deceiving, “…like when you lost to your brother _or_ you fought with Dimitri…” Felix wants to tell him to shut his mouth, to never speak to him again, but the memory that comes to mind was one that was particularly warm, one that was very close to his heart, although he’d never admit it aloud. Sylvain must see a change in his expression, Felix thinks, because his words are quieter, _softer_ , as he says, “you’d come crying to me.”

_(Hands—warm, large and comforting hands were smoothing his hair back as he bawled his eyes out. Felix cried, and he cried, because he didn’t want Prince Dimitri to be angry at him, and he didn’t want to look weak in front of his brother, and he absolutely didn’t want Sylvain to think he was nothing but a crybaby, but he was young, and he couldn’t help it. He cried, and he cried, and he got snot all over the front of Sylvain’s shirt, but the older boy hadn’t said a thing and he hadn’t even looked the least bit disgusted._

_They stood there, behind the gnarled old oak tree, because Felix couldn’t bear to let anyone else but Sylvain see him cry. They stood there, Felix’s back against the bark of the tree, his face buried in Sylvain’s chest, and Sylvain stood in front of him—close, shielding him from any eyes that might pry, a hand in his hair, the other curved against his ribs._

_Often times, a maid or a knight would have to come and search for them, hours later, and sometimes, they’d either be training with sticks they had broken from tree limbs, or the two of them would be huddled together against the tree, Felix’s head on Sylvain’s shoulder and Sylvain’s cheek against the top of Felix’s head._

_That particular day, one of Rodrigue’s personal knights had found them, propped up against each other, napping against the old oak tree.)_

The motion of Sylvain lifting a hand to run his fingers through his hair brings Felix back into the present. As his fingers thread through his hair, Sylvain says, as if recalling the same memory, “you were so meek and pure back then, _cute_ even…” he pauses here, unsure of which choice of words to say, before he comes to an ultimate decision, a barely there breath between the words because he was nothing if not something like a coward, “like a baby brother.”

Something in Felix seems to snap; and that is practically a lie, he figures, because it was something much more than _something._ His hand begins to hurt, and he just barely registers the fact that he’s still got the brush in his hand, and that his grip is too strong, and that the wood from the brush is bound to give him splinters or maybe even split in his hand. “That’s _enough,_ ” Felix growls, low and daunting, his whole demeanor changing as if preparing for a brawl.

The sudden change catches Sylvain off guard. His eyes widen, his lips part, and his throat suddenly feels much drier than it had moments prior. Weakly, he murmurs, “what?” although he knew exactly what he had done, simply because he had went out of his way to do it on purpose, _simply_ because he is a coward.

Not for the first time ever, Sylvain wonders how much more of a fool he could make himself look like in front of Felix.

“I _said,_ ‘that’s enough,’” Felix bites back, poison coating every syllable.

And not for the first time ever, Sylvain decides to dig the hole he had dug up even deeper.

“Hey, man, sorry!” he laughs it off although it were the hardest thing he’d probably ever done, and Felix just stands there, knuckles white, scowl on his face, and he looks like the cutest thing Sylvain had ever seen, but he’s sure that Felix would sooner put a blade to his throat than ever return any sliver of affection, any ounce of emotion. And so, Sylvain continues to wear the mask he’d long since grown used to wearing. Vaguely, he wonders if he would ever be able to take it off. “I just wanted to see if you wanted to pick up some girls afterward. Didn’t mean to get on your nerves or, uh, disrupt our assignment or whatever.”

“ _Look,_ ” Felix hisses, his other hand curling into a tight fist, and Sylvain thinks, _oh, Goddess, he’s going to punch me._ “You’ve been getting my on nerves for years! I’ve _tried—_ “ _and tried, and tried, and tried_ “—to be a patient with you, but I’m tired of holding my tongue.” He takes a step forward, the edges of his vision blurred so red with anger, and for a moment he’s terrified he will actually _hit_ Sylvain. Felix tightens his grip on the brush before raising it above his head and sending it toward the ground, covering their boots and pants with dust and bits of loose hay. In the back of his mind, Felix knows he ought not to make such a ruckus; after all, it was in the middle of the afternoon, right in the middle of the stables, but he couldn’t contain the frustration that had built up within his chest. “You’re _reckless_ in your personal affairs _and_ in battle! And you’re _always—_ “ _always, always, always_ “—prattling on about women!”

Sylvain shuffles backward, trying his best to school his expression. This isn’t the first time he has ever witnessed, or been on the receiving end, of Felix losing his cool, but this time, it felt too close to the heart, especially for Felix. What else was Sylvain to do if not make it worse for the both of them, even if he desperately wanted to mend and fix this and take off the mask that seemed permanently stuck by magic onto face?

“Well, you know,” he starts, plastering on a strained smile that he hopes looks real enough, “if a guy sees a pretty lady, he ought to call out to her before she’s out of sight. I mean, that’s just rude if you don’t.” Even as the words leave his lips, Sylvain is quite unsure of what he’s saying.

“You’re _insatiable,”_ Felix spits the word out as if it tasted bad on his tongue. He digs the blunt of his nails into the palms of his hands, and vaguely he registers that it stings. “Do you ever stop? I’m sorry, that was a rather _foolish_ question. You never stop, certainly not to practice your techniques. You always skip training.” He pauses, here—the slightest pause, because he is just upset enough that he lets this whole thing become a bit more personal, a bit closer to where it hurts: “and you never consider how your _actions_ hurt others, or—or, how you hold them back.”

“That—“ Sylvain takes a hurried step forward, desperation on his tongue because this _definitely_ isn’t what he intended to happen. When he had brought up the past (the best memories, in his opinion) his aim had been to soften Felix, even it if were the tiniest bit. Sylvain had intended to rid Felix’s mind of his half assed attempt to talk about women, and he had _wanted_ to just spend time with the guy—be it training together or even sitting at the dock, watching the fishes shadows beneath the glimmer of the water. “That’s never my intention,” he says, shaking his head vigorously. “Come on, Felix, you—“ _should_ “—know me better than that. I-I’m not _really_ —“

“Don’t you know when to _shut up?_ ” Felix interrupts with a growl, pushing against Sylvain’s shoulder the closer he got. “I don’t—I don’t want to _hear_ it, get the hell _away_ from me—“

Sylvain steps even closer, curling his hands against Felix’s biceps, and he thinks that for a moment, it feels nice to be this close, to feel the warmth of Felix’s own body radiate toward him as if by some gravitational pull, and he thinks that it is nice, to see the other’s face so up close after years of never daring to get _too_ close. “Look,” he says weakly, unable to look Felix in the eye, but he is able to shift closer, and closer, ducking downward so their foreheads are practically touching. “If that’s the impression I’ve given you, Felix, then I’m _sorry_.”

“I’m leaving,” Felix says, quiet, all in one breath. He could easily move away—Sylvain’s grip on him isn’t that tight, but a part of him thinks that it would hurt the both of them more if he jerked away. And so, Felix says, just as quietly, weakly, as if completely and utterly defeated, “Sylvain, I’m leaving. Let me go.”

Sylvain drops his hands without another word, and leans away from Felix just as the guy turns on his heel and stalks out of the stables.

*

It only occurs to Felix that he and Sylvain were supposed to meet with the Professor regarding their grade on their weekly task a few hours later, when the boar prince strides into the Training Grounds with Dedue trailing along behind him.

Discomfort washes over his body as if he had stepped into the very depths of the ocean. He sheathes his sword, opting to begin maintenance on his weapon in the comfort of his own room. Felix strides past them, eyes straight ahead, and he thinks that it must have been comical, the way he had skid to a stop the moment the boar prince spoke.

“Off to meet with the Professor, Felix?” Dimitri asks, harmlessly enough. “Please, send her my regards.”

Felix’s first thought is one which goes along the lines of, _why in hell would I be meeting with the Professor_ , and then it slowly dons on him—much unlike the realization he had when he was in his thirteenth year, before everything went to Hell, looking at Sylvain, who had his head thrown back as he laughed and laughed toward the Heavens, and—

“ _Oh, shit,_ ” Felix hisses, and then he’s setting off in a sprint.

He’s got time—the sun has yet to set, the grand bell has yet to chime, but he’s only got _so much_ time before it does. As Felix runs, he realizes that she is going to fail them, and he cannot even muster up any nerve to _be_ angry _,_ because after all, _he_ had been the one to storm off in the middle of the task. He can see it now, the Professor’s utter and unhidden disappointment, even as he rounds the corner to the courtyard, even as he slows to a fast paced walk because he can’t just _bolt_ into the classroom.

Felix tells himself not to worry as he strides past the Black Eagles classroom, and he continues to tell himself not to worry as he turns right, and then he begins to wonder why he is worrying at all when he sees the back of Sylvain’s head—his hair a perfect mop of a mess, and then Felix recalls what had happened in the stables for what seems like the millionth time, and he feels something close to shame, but he opts to call it anything but.

“Felix,” the Professor says, a bit surprised as she looks at Sylvain and then back to Felix, who comes to a stop next to the other. “You’re all done? That did not take long.”

“Huh?” he mutters, and after a quick glance to Sylvain, he decides to play along. “Uh, yeah, all done.”

She nods approvingly, setting various papers aside onto her desk before coming to a stand right in front of them.

Felix opens his mouth, an apology _and_ an explanation on his tongue, but then the Professor speaks first and completely throws him for a loop.

“The two of you did excellent,” she tells them happily, the glint in her eyes beyond joyous. “The stable master is very pleased as well. I must confess that I’m very impressed with the work you two put in. I will admit I was a bit… _surprised…_ to hear such praise, especially from the stable master. She can be quite…difficult to please.”

“Uh—wh—“

“Professor! Thank you!” Sylvain says cheerily. He directs an over exaggerated wink Felix’s way and although it was such a Sylvain thing to do, it felt incredibly unnatural. “It was tough work, but we did it, huh, Felix?”

“Uhm,” is all Felix says. It’s then he realizes that had been the first time Sylvain had looked at him since he first entered the room.

“Tough work, indeed. Too bad, though…”

“Professor,” Sylvain interrupts promptly, and Felix tries not to look at him as he speaks. “If that’s all, then…?”

“Oh. Yes, of course. You two are free to go,” she dismisses them with a small smile, pausing momentarily because Felix seemed to be magicked to the spot where he stood whereas Sylvain had practically ran to the door. She glances upward, toward the door, where Sylvain hesitates in the doorway before looking back to Felix. “Felix?”

“Actually, Professor, uh…” Felix wavers here, because he was entirely uncertain if this was something he _actually_ wanted to commit to. “I need to talk to you, actually. If you have the time,” he adds quickly, only to be a bit polite.

“Of course. I have the time,” she says slowly, glancing toward the door. “See you tomorrow, Sylvain.”

“Yeah, ‘course,” he says, the same faux cheerfulness lacing his voice as he adds, “tomorrow,” before slipping out of the room.

It’s with great bitterness that Felix comes to the realization that he did not feel better, even with Sylvain out of the room. The room still felt suffocating and there was still this strange taste at the back of his throat. _The worst of the damage is yet to happen,_ a little voice in the back of his mind says, and he wants nothing more than to curse.

“Well then, Felix?” the Professor murmurs, and when Felix looks at her, there is uncertainty in her eyes. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”

“I just wanted to ask… if it were possible to not group Sylvain and I together for tasks anymore,” Felix says all in one breath.

He watches as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Is there something I’m...missing?” she asks slowly.

“…Pardon?”

“Sylvain asked the same thing,” the Professor explains, narrowing her eyes. “Is there anything I need to know, Felix?”

_I think I have had the misfortune of loving him since childhood, and I am almost certain he did all the work in the stables by himself because I know I sure as hell didn’t help him out, so I suppose in a sense I’ve got no choice but to thank you for giving me a passing grade for doing nothing,_ Felix thinks, while his mouth says: “…not exactly.”

The Professor scowls at him before her face smoothes out; she sighs, brows knitting together in worry. “Whatever it is going on between you two…” she says the words carefully, as if she doesn’t mean to tread. “Do not let it affect you. We still have our monthly missions, after all. I will let Sylvain know as well.”

“Yeah. Understood.”

She heaves out another long, heavy sigh before shaking her head. Felix can still see the uncertainty there—looming behind her eyes, in the slight furrow of her brow. He kind of wants to laugh, because she cannot be much older than the rest of the House, yet she takes her role so seriously. “Is that… all you needed, Felix?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yes, Professor,” he says, and because it was true, he adds, “There’s nothing else I need.” Felix nods his head to her and turns on his heel; he’s almost to the door when she speaks up from behind.

“Felix…” she calls out. “One more thing.”

“Yeah, Professor?”

“Did you want that extra credit, or…?”

Felix pauses at the doorway, and this time it is him narrowing his eyes and scowling. “What?”

“For feeding the cats and dogs around the monastery. I had mentioned it in class before, but I was uncertain if I had been taken seriously,” she explains. “Sylvain said… you rushed off after cleaning the stables because you needed to feed the animals. I was surprised it took you such a short amount of time to do that.”

_What a bastard,_ Felix thinks, and says, “no, Professor, I, uh… did it of my own… volition.”

“Really? Perhaps I’ll join you sometime, then,” she says.

“How joyous that would be,” Felix tells her, and whether or not she catches the sarcasm dripping in his tone is something he doesn’t stick around to find out. He hurries off, thoughts of, _what a bastard what a bastard what a bastard_ running continuously through his mind.

Felix is sure he will be thinking it for the rest of his days.

**

It was strange to see Sylvain so closed off.

Or, perhaps it wasn’t, given the circumstances. After all, they just had to kill his brother not too long ago.

It had been a tough battle, a terrible aftermath, and yet through it all, Felix could sense the forced, nonchalant attitude Sylvain had put on. It was disgusting, unnatural, and frankly, Felix wanted nothing more than to throttle him and demand to know why he was being so _foolish._

Needless to say, the feeling had somewhat dissipated when all he could look at was Sylvain’s face—fearful, pained, and confused—when Miklan had turned into a Demonic Beast and lunged. Felix had been so focused on Sylvain’s profile and that distraught look on his face that he hadn’t noticed much about how the Beast looked until Miklan was already fading back into being a human in a thick, black smoke.

It had been a month since that battle, and as time slowly progressed forward, Sylvain once again seemed almost like his usual self— _almost_. He was so good at acting and at putting up a front, that Felix wondered if this were not the first time he had ever had to do such a thing.

And so came the urge to reach out—yet, Felix thought, had he the right, after their incident in the stables?

It was a few days after _that_ initial thought that Felix’s resolved crumbled to nothing but a fine dust.

He’s just finished speaking to the Blacksmith about repairing weaponry and decides to take the shorter route to the Training Grounds. Felix turns left once he reaches the Entrance Hall’s grand doors, giving a barely there nod to the Gatekeeper who shouted a greeting Felix’s way. The sounds of water splashing and the scent of flowers greet his senses the moment he makes it to the closed off staircase, and it is there he sees him.

Sylvain sits at the dock, shoulders hunched slightly as he looks at the water without really seeing, one bare foot dangling in the water.

For a moment, Felix is struck with a wave of aching familiarity. They had done that, before—ridden their horses to the very edge of Fraldarius territory just to watch the clear blue water and, if the weather permitted, take off their riding boots and socks only to roll up their pant legs just to play in that same seemingly endless body of water.

A thought comes to him then, that they are not much different than they were back then, but then another thought takes hold and tells Felix that, yes, they are much different, and everything has in fact changed.

Felix shakes his head vigorously, vanquishing away all thought. With his hands curled into fists, he makes his way to the dock, knowing all too well that he’s only walking so quickly so he doesn’t have a chance to change his mind. Felix slows gradually, coming to a stop beside the small shop the Fishkeeper ran. He stands there, shifting from foot to foot, and he is so eternally grateful that the Fishkeeper had already closed shop for the day—he didn’t need prying eyes watching him contemplate nervously about the pros and cons of walking to the end of the dock and sitting down next to the guy that sat there, slouched forward.

In the end, Felix shoves away all the pros and all the cons.

Instead, he simply walks forward.

Sylvain must know exactly who it is coming up behind him, because he grabs his boot with the sock stuffed inside and moves it to his right side, and it makes the stampede in Felix’s chest rush forward only to collide with his sternum.

Felix says nothing as he settles on the edge of the dock beside Sylvain, and he says nothing still as he brings a leg up only to shuck off his own boot. As if it were the most trying task in the world, Felix rolls up his pant leg with fixed attention before taking his sock off and shoving it inside his boot.

“What are you doing, Sylvain?” Felix asks as he shifts to dangle his leg toward the water.

“Oh, you know,” Sylvain murmurs, his eyes unfocused. He gestures vaguely, motioning to the water as he tells him, “figured a mermaid might show up or something.”

Felix rolls his eyes, a snort sounding in the back of his throat as he looks over to Sylvain. “ _So_ sorry to disappoint,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm, “all that showed up was me.”

“Nah,” Sylvain sighs, shaking his head gently. He meets Felix’s gaze and offers a small smile. “That’s nothing to say sorry about.”

Felix looks away quickly, swallowing the lump in his throat. He glares at the water, the shimmer and the sparkle of it all, and thinks, _this is nothing like the waters in Fraldarius territory._

“What about you, Felix?”

Felix jerks back into attention. “Excuse me?”

“What are you doing? Don’t tell me you came _just_ to talk to little old me,” Sylvain teases, over exaggerated.

“ _You_ —“ Anger flashes, hot and bright, behind his eyelids. He pauses, taking in a deep breath before he said something he ought not to say. For a moment, Felix feels as if he is torn in two. It is, ultimately, _them:_ Felix and Sylvain—Sylvain and Felix; and yet he feels as though the person next to him is some sort of walking phantom. Felix goes out on a limb, choosing his next words with care. “You’ve… been acting… differently.”

“I have?” Sylvain’s tone is just as careful and even more calculated.

“ _Yes,”_ Felix says, exasperated. He stares straight ahead, uncharacteristically fearful of the look that could possibly be on Sylvain’s face. Perhaps this is what he deserves, he figures, for what had happened at the stables, all those months ago. “Ever since we killed your brother, and still, even after getting rid of his little band of thieves—you… you’ve just been…strange.”

“I’m not… sure I follow, Felix,” he says, brows knitting together. “I’m the same I’ve always been.” Sylvain pauses, and then adds jokingly, “you think I’m strange?”

Felix ignores the poor attempt at humor in favor of looking directly at Sylvain’s profile. It stings, almost, because he looks eerily similar to how he had looked when Miklan transformed—fearful, pained, confused. Felix exhales a shaky breath before speaking. “You definitely are not the same, and frankly, I’m sick and tired of your charade.”

“Look, Felix, I don’t know what you want me to say.” Sylvain sighs, a drawn out noise that grates against Felix’s eardrums. He holds his hands out of front of him, glaring down at his palms. “We killed him. He’s gone. It’s—it’s me, it’s me who survived. I have the Lance, I have the Crest, and now I have you here, questioning me when all I’m trying to do is stare at the water and not have a single thought run across my mind.”

Felix pauses, taken aback. He falters, and the raw flash of desperation and confusion must show on his face without his meaning to because Sylvain softens immediately, his smile as soft as the ones he would give to him when they were children. “I…” Felix clears his throat. He finds that, suddenly, he’s unsure of what to do when Sylvain’s looking at him like that. “I—“

“Didn’t mean to blow up there, Felix,” Sylvain interrupts him in a murmur, his smile still so soft. “Just got a lot on my plate, I guess. But you’re here now,” he says, and this time, the smile he directs toward Felix is much like his usual ones, wide and looking as though he were on the verge of laughter, but there’s something else there that Felix cannot take apart and put a name to, and on a normal day, it wouldn’t have terrified him. “So, why don’t you take my mind somewhere else, Felix?”

Felix clears his throat, mind racing. There are a million and ten things he wants to say, ranging from _I remember how torn and split your fingernails were after the incident with the well_ and _that is the same exact expression from childhood, you bastard,_ but he knows they hadn’t the time for even the tiniest sliver of it. He’s exhausted, thoroughly spent from how outspoken and open he had just been, but at least Sylvain’s smile looked more like his usual self. And so, he says instead: “I…want to apologize for…my behavior, back then.”

Sylvain tilts his head. “Back then? What are you talking about, Felix?” he asks, and then, a bit more jokingly, “is this a trap?”

“Well, I suppose it wasn’t _too_ long ago,” Felix sighs, pressing his lips together as he turns to scowl at Sylvain. “You know. When I called you… ‘insatiable.’”

“Oh, that?” he laughs, shaking his head as he lifts a single shoulder in a shrug. “Can’t say it didn’t hurt, but you’ve got nothing to apologize for… just like before.” The corners of his lips twitch up in a smile. “I mean, uh, you’ve said worse, Felix. _Considerably_ worse.”

He remembers the first time Felix said that he hated him—and while it was said in such a childish, angry rush, it hadn’t fared well with Sylvain at all. He remembers that a maid in dark blue robes had escorted him back to his quarters for the evening, and he remembers her telling him to not worry about Master Felix’s words, because _didn’t you know, you are his favorite person,_ and _the boy might not even remember it by tomorrow’s time._ She has been right, of course, but Sylvain still remembers how distraught he had been that night and how utterly nervous he had been to see Felix when dawn came once again.

“I mean, come on,” Sylvain pipes up, laughing a bit at the memory. “We’ve known each other since we were _kids_. We’re not going to let your constant verbal abuse get in the way of our friendship, are we?” he jokes.

Felix pauses, lips twisting as if something distasteful were on his tongue. “No…” he murmurs, shaking his head. He focuses on the water intently, recalling all the crudeness while also recalling all the gentleness. He can feel the corners of his lip twitch upward in a smile, so he forces it down before it has a chance to show on his face. “I suppose not.”

Sylvain leans over a bit, knocking his elbow against Felix’s arm. “Each time is clearly not the last. I mean, you’d _always_ start yelling at me whenever I started doing something dumb,” he reminds him. It’s as the words leave his mouth that Sylvain recalls climbing a tree when he was in his fourteenth year. He had almost fallen out of it countless times, heart racing because Felix was safe on the ground, yelling up at him _don’t you dare get hurt,_ and _I don’t know a lick of healing magic,_ and _Sylvain, get_ down _, what are you doing, you’re going to kill yourself all because of a cat stuck in a tree!_

It hadn’t been something dumb, though, Sylvain thinks—after all, Felix had cried, and cried, and _cried_ , all because he saw that cat stuck high up in that tree and heard the sad, loud meows from way above. Felix had been such a softie for cats, no matter how fiercely he denied it as a kid. Who was Sylvain to not climb that tree and rescue the cat? Sure, the squires of House Fraldarius had been on their way, but they had been taking far too long, and Felix was just moping far too much for Sylvain’s liking.

“And whenever _you,_ ” Felix emphasizes, elbowing Sylvain right back as well as effectively pulling him back into the present, “dragged me into something, Ingrid would find out and start screaming lectures at us.” He, too, recalls something here. Sylvain had been so intrigued by Rodrigue’s study—the books about tactics and war, the strange devices on the desk and shelves, and especially the long, shiny, pure white blade encased by glass at the very top of the tallest bookcase. Felix remembers how Sylvain’s had stared up at the blade—his eyes seeming to sparkle, and he remembers Sylvain had said that it was a fine weapon, _for a sword._

And Felix remembers Sylvain’s words, _c’mon, Felix, I just want to see it up close just one time, come on, Ingrid’s busy drinking tea with Glenn,_ and Felix knew that he shouldn’t, he knew that he would, without a doubt, get torn in two by his Father _and_ his Father’s retainer _and_ his older brother, but Felix was young, and his heart pounded in his chest, and the palms of his hands grew sweaty when Sylvain got too close. So, he allowed Sylvain talk him into it.

It was a tricky process, but they had managed it after several failed attempts.

Felix had gotten on Sylvain’s shoulders because _you’re smaller than me, Felix; if I got on your shoulders I’d probably crush you,_ and Sylvain held onto his ankles, his fingers cool against Felix’s burning skin, and Felix thought that, not so strangely enough, it felt nice. Felix had held onto the edges of the shelves, carefully stretching his body as much as it could go, and Sylvain had laughed and cheered him on from below, _you’ve almost got it, Felix; I’ll definitely treat you to some food after all this,_ and it only encouraged Felix more. He reached higher, the tips of his fingers finally brushing against the smooth wooden bottom of the display casing. He began to sway from side to side the more his concentration slipped, and Sylvain had exclaimed in alarm, trying his damnedest to keep the both of them balanced and still, but—

They hadn’t thought about the possibility that Ingrid would in fact come to looking for them.

The door to Rodrigue’s study had slammed open, and Ingrid had rushed forward, her footfalls seeming powerful enough to shake all of Fódlan. She had been yelling at the top of her lungs: _you fools, you stupid fools, I knew something was up the moment you two hadn’t shown up for horseback riding, you honestly cannot believe that I didn’t noticed the starry eyed stare you had toward that sword, did you?!_

It had been too much, all at once: Felix wavered, his core balance dissipating in the midst of getting caught, and Sylvain couldn’t hold Felix up no more than he could still the way his legs shook beneath him. Sylvain’s knees buckled, and he went down while Felix flailed, grabbing at anything he could although he knew that it was no use. He landed on Sylvain, hard, books and tomes and bundles of tied parchment falling around them.

_You could have died!_ Ingrid had shrieked, because for all her anger, for all their stupidity and foolery, she cared for those boys as if they were her own family. Perhaps saying they could have died was farfetched, but many have died for far less. Sylvain had laughed at it, though, loud and deafening before lowering his voice to a whisper; he tilted his head and murmured, _dying together wouldn’t be so bad, huh, Felix,_ while Ingrid fretted and scolded them, and Felix thought, strangely enough, that it didn’t sound like such a terrible thing.

Beside him, in the present, in the _now,_ Sylvain laughs. “All these years and not much has changed, has it?” he muses.

Felix shifts uncomfortably, kicking at the water.

“But…” Sylvain continues, and Felix wants to flee and hide, because he knows where this is going. “You’ve changed, Felix. You used to be so…I don’t know…” he pauses, searching for the words, “carefree…when we were young. Now, you’re the exact opposite.”

“ _Well_ ,” Felix starts, furrowing his brow. He thinks of his pounding heart and of his sweaty palms, of Sylvain’s hands smoothing back his hair and of Sylvain’s heartbeat against his ear and thinks that, the way he changed couldn’t have been helped at all, not when he had grown up with _him_. “You’re not any different,” he says it like an off handed comment, but perhaps it holds too much bitterness, “good for nothing then. Good for nothing now.”

“Again with the abuse!” Sylvain throws his head back and laughs. He shakes his head, making circles in the water with his foot just to see the water ripple outward. “This from the guy who’s always been by that good for nothing’s side. Did you really come to apologize, or was your real aim to insult me?”

Felix glares at him. “I was on my way to train,” he explains, “and I saw you sitting here. That’s all.”

“You were off to train? Again? _Now_ who’s insatiable?”

“Better than sitting here, idly kicking at the water and terrorizing the fish, like you.”

Sylvain leans over, elbowing Felix lightly on the arm. “A little idleness would do you some good, _pal_. Hey, come on. I know! How about I buy you something to eat? That vendor just out of town makes some pretty good stuff.”

_Tempting,_ Felix thinks, and tells him, “no.”

Sylvain makes a face that Felix doesn’t see, watching as Felix all but shakes his leg free of excess water. “You have to choose, Felix,” Sylvain says, narrowing his eyes. Felix shows no sign of responding, too focused on slipping his sock over his wet foot before rolling his pant leg back down. “Felix? Felix, come on, you gotta choose—our friendship, or your _training_ ,” Sylvain demands hurriedly, and he tries not to gape openly as Felix all but slips his boot on, securing it before he stands up.

Felix looks down at him, the corners of his lips curved upward in the tiniest smile imaginable. Sylvain sits there, wide eyed as he stares up at Felix, who is illuminated by the sun that’s just barely begun to set. Hues of the softest oranges and yellows and pinks frame his face so effortlessly as Felix says, “my training,” and Sylvain thinks he might just stop breathing and fall into the water just as Felix laughs—soft, quiet, a barely there noise that Sylvain wouldn’t have heard if he hadn’t been carelessly and stupidly seeking it out. Felix turns on his heel, calling out, “good bye, for now,” over his shoulder.

“What just—“ Sylvain jerks his foot out of the water, uncaring of the fact that the force of the motion had caused water to splash upward, soaking the bottom portion of his pants and most of the dock. “Is he—“ Sylvain scrambles to stand up, his heart caught in his throat while the beat of it hammers against his eardrums. He snatches his boot with the sock stuffed inside quickly before trailing behind Felix hurriedly. “Wait, Felix! I’ll come train too! Wait up!” he yells, and he thinks that he must look incredibly ridiculous, jogging up the steps with one bare foot and the bottom half of his pants soaked, but Sylvain finds that he doesn’t mind because eventually, Felix slows his pace and allows Sylvain to catch up to him.

It’s quiet for a few seconds before Felix speaks up.

“Actually…” he says, scrunching his nose in disgust as he glances downward. “Maybe it’s best you not walk beside me, Sylvain. You look like an idiot.”

Sylvain laughs, throwing an arm around Felix’s shoulders only to pull him closer. “I look like an idiot, huh. Doesn’t that just make you an idiot by association?” Sylvain asks, sighing loud and dramatic. “I gotta know, Felix. How’s that wet sock feeling?”

Felix rolls his eyes, ignoring most of what came from Sylvain’s mouth. “Better than looking like an idiot.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Sylvain sighs, loosening his grip. Felix shrugs his arm off easily yet still remains close. Sylvain glances at him from the corner of his eye, a smile playing at his lips simply because of their close proximity. They walk past the rest of the dormitories and up the stone steps, their arms brushing occasionally. Sylvain wonders if it were as comforting to Felix as it was to him.

“Really, though,” Felix says after a moment, giving Sylvain a doubtful look. “When will you put your boot back on?”

“Aw, Felix. Am I embarrassing you, by any chance?”

“Only since childhood,” Felix tells him, and pushes open the grand doors that lead to the little preparations room before the Training Grounds. As they shut with an almost deafening sound behind them, Felix turns to Sylvain. They’re alone in the little room now, nothing but racks of swords and lances and bows as well as stacks upon stacks of tomes ranging from fire magic to meteor magic around them.

There are a million things that could happen, here—a million things still roaming about the front of his mind, burning at the tip of his tongue, but Felix has already stepped out of his comfort zone once already. He wonders whether or not that was just an excuse, and quickly discards the thought because _thinking_ isn’t what he came here to do. So, instead of speaking, Felix gives Sylvain another _look,_ one that says all that needs said and perhaps more if the guy in front of him would only _see._

Sylvain laughs, and it is a simple sound, a comforting song. “Hang tight, Felix. Go on and wait for me, I’ll be there in a sec.”

“Rightly so. Wouldn’t want an accident to happen, after all,” Felix says smoothly, and while his tone had been full of that rare mischief, Sylvain still grimaces. He makes a face at Felix’s back just as he turns and walks away. He sits on the very edge of one of the benches off to the side, hurriedly slipping his sock on and rolling his pant leg down before securing the buckles of his boot. As he hauls himself up, he sees that a little ways off, Felix stands in front of the slightly ajar inner door that leads to the Training Grounds.

“Was there a House Tournament today?” Sylvain wonders aloud, coming to a stop right behind Felix. “If I remember the rotation right, the weapon this month was swords and you usually…” He trails off, stretching a bit to look over Felix’s head, and then it clicks.

Dimitri and Byleth are there, facing one another in the middle of the Training Grounds. Dimitri holds a lance in his hands, and they are too far away to hear much of their conversation, but by the way Byleth nods and tilts her head this way and that while motioning with her own hands, it seems that he’s giving her pointers on the ways of the Lance. They watch as the Professor reaches out, taking the lance from Dimitri’s grasp only to shift her stance to one they’ve seen countless times during battle.

And they watch as Dimitri smiles—tentative yet excited, a glint in his eyes that had never been there before, and they watch as he takes half a step forward, reaching out only to tap at the side of her hand. The Professor’s head jerks up and Dimitri’s smile seems to widen further as she slides her hand up, adjusting her grip.

Felix turns away, ducking aside to slip past where Sylvain stood, so close behind him.

Sylvain follows, lowering his voice. “Are we not… going to train?”

“Not in there. Let’s go to the library and polish up on tactics.”

“What’s the matter?” Sylvain raises a brow, amused. “You got something against the love in the air, or what?”

“It…it could never work,” Felix says, strained. “Not with how he is.”

“You don’t know that,” Sylvain tells him, exasperated. They’re out of the preparations room now, the grand doors shut securely behind them. Felix walks hurriedly ahead toward the north side of the courtyard with Sylvain hot on his tail. “I think it’s good for him. Wouldn’t it be, for anyone? You can’t tell me he’s ever had _that_ expression on his face before. It’s good to look at someone like that, you know.”

“Please, spare me your romantic sermons,” Felix hisses. “If this is just your way to prattle on about how you’ve looked at numerous women like that, don’t bother.”

“I’ve only ever looked at one person like that,” Sylvain murmurs, and whether or not Felix heard him, he doesn’t find out until much, much later.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2 is finally here... love how when i first posted c1 for felix's bday i was like "c2 is almost done!" and now it's july!
> 
> this was getting far too long, so i decided to make this 3 chapters instead of 2.
> 
> anyways, please enjoy!

Days after the dragon roared and raged and their Professor fell into inky darkness, Felix hears a voice in the back of his mind. At first, the voice falls upon deaf ears—after all, how could he even hope to hear his own thoughts when the whole Monastery was in an uproar? Everyone screams, and countless flee for their lives, and many more weep the dead and mourn the capture of the Archbishop and what may happen to Fódlan.

Around them all, everything and everyone changes.

Weeks pass as they wait and bide their time, and the ones who had territories and lands to defend disperse before the Empire makes do on their promise to wipe the whole Church clean of anyone else who may still reside.

Later, Felix hears it in the wind that the Prince and his Vassal were captured and sentenced to death.

He doesn’t listen to the wind anymore, and barely to the voice that nags at his conscious. The voice—a girl, with a high pitched, snappish voice—talks to him of a promise this, a promise that, of not forgetting, ever, because she is counting on it, whoever _she_ is, and that deep down they all are, and _you lot are the ones I seek!_ and _how rude and utterly crass of you to ignore one such as I, do you even know who I_ am?! and _why must you all toss me aside so!_

Felix wonders if he’s gone mad, and then decides that perhaps being mad was just what he needed.

A year passes, and then two—he defends his territory and answers calls for aid from his former classmates, staining his hands and the soil and the soles of his boots. Vaguely, he wonders whether or not the trees and greenery around his home would soon darken in color and ooze out a rotten stench from all the blood that’s seeped into the soil. Felix thinks that, perhaps that would keep the enemies away, but it sure would be unfortunate when the winds blow north, through the plains and to Sylvain’s territory. He smiles at that before he remembers the swell of emotion in his chest. The smile fades away as quickly as blood washes from his blade.

It’s when he receives a letter from that very same Sylvain, just shy of another three years later, that the voice in the back of his mind gasps.

_The promise!_

“You again,” he murmurs, furrowing his brow. “I had hoped I wasn’t losing my mind entirely.”

_Worry not, boy—_

“Boy?” he scoffs.

_—you are not the only one I torment so._

“Right,” Felix says. Her words leave him slightly unsettled, but he opts to shove it aside into the corner of his mind, where all the other unsettling things the voice has said to him through the years reside. He stares down at the letter once he’s done, studying the elegant scrawl that is Sylvain’s penmanship before taking a deep breath. He was not prepared, far from it, but this was no time to dwell.

_Felix,_

_I hope this letter makes it to you. If not, that means it’s been intercepted and you aren’t the one reading it. That wouldn’t be good, huh? Guess I’ll find out if my messenger makes it back._

Felix rolls his eyes while the voice in the back of his mind says, _I told that buffoon I wouldn’t allow it! Does he not trust my word?_ And Felix really isn’t sure what to think about that, so he shakes his head vigorously before he continues reading.

_We haven’t seen each other in a while. But, not only that—it’ll have been five years soon. Can you believe it? Do you remember the promise?_

He wants to deny ever making any promise, ever—but he knows that would be crueler than he’s ever been. Felix remembers every promise he’s ever made. After all, he’s been holding onto one ever since childhood, and another for nearly five years.

_The others have already been contacted. Everyone will be traveling toward the promise. I will be heading to Galatea territory soon; perhaps even on the day this letter reaches you._

Felix furrows his brow.

_I’ll be passing by your territory in a few days time. Would you care to join me on the journey? Regardless of your answer, I’ll wait for you at our tree. You remember the one, right? I’m sure you do._

_See you soon._

_S_

Felix sighs—a long, drawn out noise. He folds the parchment carefully and pinches the bridge of his nose. The messenger awaits his answer just outside the room. Vaguely, he wonders what would happen if he didn’t even give an answer at all.

_You are not the only one who feels troubled so,_ the girl’s voice chides, not gently at all.

“Would you shut up,” he bites back, and steps out of the room to offer an answer.

*

“I must say, Sylvain,” Ingrid says three days later. They’ve just left Galatea territory on horseback after resting overnight and replenishing their supplies. Scouts are a fair distance ahead of them, securing the route to the outskirts of Charon, where they will once again rest before travelling the rest of the way to Garreg Mach. And there are scouts a distance behind them, covering their tracks, ensuring no one else was following. “Wasn’t that a bit… _too_ courageous?”

“Huh?” Sylvain gapes. “What’re you talking about?”

Ingrid turns to Felix, who gives her a blank look. “He sent you a messenger as well, did he not? Wasn’t that rather bold of him, to just write the plan, plain as day, when enemies could have intercepted? Frankly, I’m shocked it hadn’t happened.”

“Like I keep telling you,” Sylvain sighs with a shake of his head. “A little birdie told me it wouldn’t happen.”

Felix freezes atop his horse, his knuckles white with how tightly he holds the reigns.

“Like I keep telling you,” Ingrid mocks, voice tight, “you’re talking complete nonsense. Isn’t he, Felix? Please, tell him he’s talking nonsense. He will listen to you at a drop of a hat; better yet, a drop of a needle.”

“Uh,” is all Felix says, uneasy. It was…rather difficult.

“You believe him?!” Ingrid yells so loud she scares the horse she rode. Quickly, she reaches out to smooth over its mane, soft and comforting. “I can’t believe this,” she hisses, “have you gone completely mad, Felix?”

Felix snorts, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. He keeps his gaze ahead, wary of what may show in his eyes as he speaks. “It’s not that I… _believe_ him.”

“You…” Sylvain starts, brows furrowed. When Felix gives in and looks over at him, he finds Sylvain looking anxious. It’s in that look that Felix understands. “You’ve heard…?”

“A bit,” Felix admits begrudgingly. “She—the, uh, voice—well, who knows, actually? Maybe I’m mad. Maybe you’re just as mad, Sylvain.”

Sylvain makes a face at him before turning to Ingrid. “You can’t tell me you _haven’t_ felt something,” he tries, exasperated. “She said… she said we’re the lot she seeks. You didn’t hear anything like that?” At Ingrid’s wariness, Sylvain makes _another_ face. “Don’t lie, either; Ashe told me that for him, it was like hearing the voice through a brick wall.”

Ingrid pinches the bridge of her nose and groans as Felix focuses ahead, seemingly engrossed in the way the clouds moved. “I mean—perhaps…something…but it was not a voice. I would get these terrible headaches. Sometimes, it felt as though something were nagging at the back of my mind. But, isn’t that just stress? Perhaps… the promise just… _really_ stuck.” She sighs, shaking her head because she finds that she honestly doesn’t have a reasonable explanation. “I hope we all are not being wishful thinkers.”

“Nah,” Sylvain says, and smiles at Felix as he continues, “nothing’s wishful regarding the Professor, right? We’re all getting together again, so...isn’t that something?”

Ingrid smiles a bit, delighted by his words in spite of it all as Felix simply hums.

Felix will admit their Professor was a strange one. Perhaps it’s all connected—the voice, how solidly the promise holds even after five years; and it’s then Felix recalls the change in her appearance, and how sometimes, those close calls they had in battle seemed a bit more like reality than a nightmare.

(He remembers seeing Ashe get pierced by a lance; and another, and another. He remembers the cry of Ingrid’s steed once the arrows had hit, and he remembers watching Ingrid fall, her skull cracking open. He remembers, with certain clarity, the look in their Professor’s eyes when a blast of Dark magic had seemed to restrict his own breathing, seemed to make his vision blurred and black around the edges. Hadn’t he died? Felix recalls the nightmares. Sylvain had screamed, and Dimitri had roared with rage. _Hadn’t he died?_ )

Felix tries his best to shake it off.

It was years ago. A child’s nightmare.

_Don’t you know already?_ the girls asks, and she sounds so forlorn that Felix has to fight the bile that threatens to make him sick.

_Remain calm,_ he tells himself, hands shaking.

It doesn’t take him long, having perfected a stony exterior for years, now. Felix narrows his eyes against the sun, and keeps his gaze high as they ride toward the promise.

*

They’ve made it to the village at the base of the Monastery with another day of travel under their belts. They part ways with their party at the village entrance, leaving behind Ingrid’s Pegasus and all the horses beside Sylvain’s; she trails along promptly behind them even when the reins weren’t held.

Immediately, the villager’s talk makes it toward their ears.

“I’m telling you, she was crazy, or something,” the man says, shaking his head ruefully. “I told her, that place is _deserted,_ and there’s nothing but thieves roaming about! I swear, I warned her. If she ends up dead…”

Ingrid pales upon hearing the words.

“You even mentioned the Imperial troops?” another man asks.

“And how they all got _slaughtered?!_ ” a women gasps.

“I did!” he insists to the group. “Told her I wouldn’t call her a coward, and what did she do? Shook her head, and said her _students_ were waiting for her. Then, she just marched upstream, toward the place! The woman’s crazy, I’m telling ya. There haven’t been students there since… _since_ —”

Sylvain approaches quickly, all smiles and soft eyes. “Sorry to interrupt, but mind if I ask when that was?”

“Huh? What, you think you can _save_ her?” an older woman asks, eyes darting from Sylvain, to Felix, and then Ingrid. Her face pales once she studies them again, finally registering the weapons and the gleaming armor. She takes her head upon the realization that, _yes, these kids think they can save her._ Her knobby hands shake atop the cane she used. “No, no no, young ones, I-I wouldn’t…“

Felix steps forward, exasperated as he interrupts. “When was it? That’s all we want to know. What happens next doesn’t concern any of you, right?” He stares at each of them, one by one, pointedly. They were not fit for battle: starved and scrawny with barely any life in their eyes. Just by the look of them, it wouldn’t concern them at all. “So just tell us.”

They all exchange wary, reluctant looks before someone speaks up. “The sun has moved, but not much since I saw her,” the first man admits. “By now, I wager she has indeed made it far into the Monastery. Well, _made it_ may be too far of a stretch…”

“Thank you,” Ingrid says quickly, voice hard. “That is all we needed to know.” She turns away first, her brows furrowed as she bites out a _come on, boys,_ to Felix and Sylvain. They hurry after her, and they are not quite yet out of earshot before the group begins to pray and hope in unison that they make it out alive, or perhaps change their minds, because they’d be damned to try to save them with their families on the line. “That—that has to be her,” Ingrid whispers in a rush as they tread their way toward the outskirts of the village.

The Monastery looms a bit overhead—but it is not so grand, anymore.

Broken and haunted, a shell of what used to be.

Felix looks away.

“Sure sounds like her,” Sylvain agrees.

“You guys don’t—you guys don’t…really think…” Ingrid pauses, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I mean, those villagers said there were _thieves_ running amok…”

Felix’s eyes graze over their surroundings the closer to the Monastery they get—broken weapons, torn clothing, cracked armor and old dried blood turned a revolting shade of brown. There are rundown stalls all around, and he could have sworn a crow had just swooped down and taken a finger or two from a corpse he couldn’t see, but could tell was just behind the stall that used to sell fishing lines and hooks.

“There’s no way. Right? Right.”

Felix takes a deep breath and holds it before releasing it slowly.

Ingrid bristles. She rounds on Sylvain quickly, an angry fire in her eyes. “Sylvain, this is no time for—“

“You two don’t smell that?” Felix asks, focusing far, far ahead. In the distance, there was something else—another clash alongside the familiar tings of a sword. He wouldn’t have heard it so clearly if he hadn’t been so used to hearing the sounds of battle and training.

“Smell what?” Sylvain and Ingrid say in unison.

Felix quirks an eyebrow. “Does it not smell like her magic?”

The two of them pause, eyes wide as they focus on the air. Felix can see when it registers for the both of them. Sylvain’s eyes widen, and his lips stretch into a wide grin. Ingrid gasps, a wet and tearful noise that comes from her throat before she whistles—two low notes, a high note, and then another low one that lingers into the air. They hear her Pegasus’ wings before they see him—all white with silver and gold décor. “Felix!” she screams angrily over the flaps of his wings, “if you’re wrong, I’m seriously going to _kill_ you!”

Sylvain tilts his head back as he throws a leg over his horse, and he laughs and laughs.

Felix swallows the lump in his throat.

***

They all have changed—perhaps, except for their Professor. Yet, that wasn’t as surprising as it should have been.

Felix watches as she trails behind the boar prince diligently, her expression so forlorn it makes him sick. He always looks away, however, because the sight was something that didn’t settle well with him. He wants to growl and grab the guy by the hair on his head, because is he so blind to not notice how the Professor looks whenever he mutters to the _ghosts_ that haunt him? Was he so blind as to not notice how his fellow former classmates pick and chose their words so carefully, as to not aggravate him?

It was bloodshed waiting to happen.

All around them, the changes were drastic. Needless to say, it was difficult adjusting to the way things were now compared to five years ago. To the way the Monastery stood, ragged and in desperate need of work, to the way they all seemed _almost_ like strangers to each other. That last part faded away quickly, however, because there was something there, like a string of fate that tied them all together; it was impossible not to fall back into place as if nothing had happened.

As weeks turn into months, the change gets easier and the battles rage on. It was getting more and more difficult to listen to the boar’s words—after everything they were doing, marching to Enbarr just for his own bloodlust? Felix wasn’t blind, he could see how wary it made the Professor and how nervous the others were; and so he couldn’t simply allow the boar to prattle on about vengeance as if it were the only word in the books. _There’s nothing to be gained,_ he had told Byleth, _from exchanging words with someone who has lost their mind._ Gilbert chided him harshly, and the Professor looked frustrated and saddened, but Felix kept talking simply because this all was ridiculous, because they could all get added to the pile of corpses beneath the boar’s throne because of something as _addictive_ as his own bloodlust.

Felix only shut up when his father interrupted to inform them that the soldiers were ready.

War meant close calls. Was that so hard to understand? War meant watching people suffer, and get hurt, and it meant watching others bleed and scream and even die and sometimes it may just be someone close to you.

It’s when his father dies that everything changes, drastically, _again._

They bury his father off a path, deep in the forest, because the small carriage they had brought got destroyed in the fight. There was no way to bring his body to the Monastery, and upon having that realization, Felix had turned on his heel, searching for a place to bury his father. Felix understood that this was war, and whoever died during war…well, to be buried off a path was better than rotting out in the open. He could at least give his father that.

Felix could feel eyes on him all the while he dug into the dirt with his hands—to the Professor’s and Ashe’s, to Gilbert’s and Ingrid’s, to Mercedes’ and Annette’s—but he felt no eyes on him as much as he felt Sylvain’s. The only time he _hadn’t_ felt Sylvain’s eyes on him was when the guy knelt down across from him only to dig into the dirt as well—and even that hadn’t lasted long, because soon Gilbert had walked forward, murmuring under his breath that a mage from the Monastery knew a controlled type of Earth magic that would allow the grave to be dug quicker than with their hands. Felix hadn’t been looking for finer details, so he had tuned Gilbert out and gotten out of the way.

With his father wrapped in protective magic and the Earth, they travelled back to the Monastery.

It doesn’t taken them long to make it back to the church, where the Professor insists everyone turn in for the night, and perhaps the next few days, to really, _truly_ rest.

Naturally, Felix doesn’t listen.

It’s quiet, almost _mournful_ as he makes his way toward the pond almost a full day later. The place was practically abandoned this late in the evening—the keepers from both the greenhouse and the pond were gone, and the only source of light was the almost set sun and the barely there stars, which all but glowed against the surface of the water.

He sits there for a while, unsure of where to direct his thoughts. Anger? That seems rather silly, considering his little speech over a month ago. Saddness? Perhaps—after all, there was something there, a hole of some sorts, which felt ragged around the edges. After his brother’s death, his relationship with his father was next to nothing rather than just simply _strained._ Still, the man was his father, and Felix had no mother, no brother, and now he hadn’t even a father. As far as he knew, his uncle was alive and still defending Fraldarius territory—and yet, upon hearing the news of Rodrigue’s passing, how would his uncle fair? Would it cloud his mind, leaving his defenses open, causing his uncle die as well?

Felix takes a deep breath and holds it until it hurts before letting it go slowly.

His chest ached, undoubtedly so. It was strange, he’ll admit.

He hopes, and he _hopes,_ that his father’s death was not in vain. After the boar’s little speech and the glint in his eye that looked much like the one from five years ago, he can only hope even moreso. He hated to leave it all up to hope, to fate, to whatever the hell was out there, but sometimes it had to be done. There were, after all, things beyond his own control; things he couldn’t change or mend, even with his own hands.

Felix sits there a while longer, his breathing deep and calculated as he watches the colors change on the water’s surface. If he focused hard enough, he could just barely see tailfins dancing about. It is then that he recalls something, from all those years ago—

Footsteps sound behind him, closing in.

The closer the footsteps come, the less dread Felix feels on his shoulders.

Beside him, Sylvain sits down, free of armor.

It’s quiet for a moment until Sylvain speaks.

“What are you up to, Felix?” he asks, innocently enough.

“Oh, you know,” Felix murmurs, glancing sideways at Sylvain. In spite of it all—the conflict of emotions swirling around, the tiredness in his bones—Felix finds himself smiling mischievously. “I figured a mermaid might show up or something.”

Sylvain groans, shaking his head. “Can’t believe you remember that,” he says with a laugh, to which Felix wants to ask, _how could I not,_ but he holds his tongue. “Really, though, it could happen,” Sylvain insists. “Honest, it could. You never know.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you going to apologize to me?”

“Why would I do that?” Sylvain asks, shoving an elbow against Felix’s bicep. “Come on, man, I’m not going to apologize for showing up instead of a mermaid. I’m a delight, I think, even _better_ than a mermaid.”

“You _think_ ,” Felix scoffs, voice dripping sarcasm.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask me?” Sylvain quips. “I sure as hell didn’t come here just to talk to little old you.”

Felix snorts, but gives in regardless. He was too tired. “What are you doing here, Sylvain?”

“Lying,” Sylvain tells him immediately, before his name is even out of Felix’s mouth. “I came for you.”

The air stills.

“I couldn’t imagine what for,” Felix says carefully.

“That’s not cute, Felix,” Sylvain chides lightly. “Don’t pretend to be strong.”

“I’m stronger than you, aren’t I?” He says it to taunt, but wonders all the while if it would work.

“Felix, come on,” Sylvain sighs, exasperated. He shakes his head before running a glove free hand through his hair. Felix watches from the corner of his eye and wishes above all else that he was incapable of feeling any sort of emotion. “I’m being serious here. I’d like it if, you know, you would be, too.”

Felix sighs as he narrows his eyes at the water. Vaguely, he wonders if it was too late to take off his boots and dangle his feet in. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says eventually, because it was true. What was there, really, to even say? He remembers when they had to kill Sylvain’s brother. “You can’t say I’ve been acting strange, have you? It’s only been a day.”

“You haven’t, no,” Sylvain agrees. “You’ve been acting about the same as you usually do.” He leans back, planting his hands flat against the wood of the dock. Sylvain decides not to say that maybe _that_ was the problem. After all, it wasn’t as if Felix’s father had tried to kill him like Sylvain’s brother did him. “I guess you don’t really have to say anything at all, but… I want you to know that it’d be okay, if you did.”

“It—“ Felix opens his mouth only to clamp it shut. He brings a hand up, pinching at the bridge of his nose before he sighs. Felix lets himself fall back gently, his back against the dock, gaze toward the sky. “It isn’t as if I am _incapable_ of feeling emotion.”

Sylvain hums, waiting for Felix to continue.

“It, uh, you know. It aches, strangely enough. My father and more than half of his ideals had irritated me to no end, and now he’s dead. I just wonder how I should feel, and how much…” Felix trails off as he stares up at the sky, which is now just hues of dark oranges and reds, the faintest traces of an almost blackish blue popping through. He can see the stars better now, as well, though he can’t help but wonder where the moon was. “It wasn’t as if…” Felix sighs, brows furrowing together. “To this day I still remember a time when my old man was so… _grand._ ”

“Yeah?” Sylvain murmurs, lips quirking in a smile.

“He was powerful, and he seemed gigantic when I was a kid. I remember watching my brother train with our father.”

“They were a sight to behold, huh?” Sylvain says softly, as if he hadn’t seen it before.

Felix snorts, but nods. “Yeah.”

It’s quiet, the only sounds being the owls hooting to each other and the flaps of bats wings. The water is stiller than it had been before—calmer, all the living things coming to a rest. Felix closes his eyes only to open them again when Sylvain speaks.

“You’ll miss him,” Sylvain says, and it irritates Felix a bit, because it wasn’t a question.

“The child in me will,” Felix admits it although he didn’t want to. Though, he supposes there was no harm in it—after all, the child in him died long ago.

“Felix…” Sylvain says, hesitant, and so Felix lolls his head to the side to look at up Sylvain. He looks the same as ever—his hair a perfect mess, his eyes soft and easy, and he’s got the smallest hint of a smile curving his lips, as if he’s looking at something precious, but _that can’t be right_ , Felix thinks. He doesn’t move, even as Sylvain extends a hand slowly, as though he were afraid of scaring Felix away, and Felix isn’t sure what to make of that thought, because when had he ever not enjoyed the times Sylvain would tug him close?

It’s when Sylvain brushes his hair back and away from his face that Felix’s mind becomes completely blank.

“I’m here now,” Sylvain tells him, his smile growing wider as he looks down at Felix. He repeats the motion, smoothing back Felix’s hair, over and over, until random strands have loosened from the tie at the back of his head, and until Felix’s forehead is uncovered. “So, I’ll take your mind somewhere else.”

The air begins to move again.

He blinks up at Sylvain. Suddenly, Felix feels as though he lost a battle he hadn’t known he’d been participating in. It wasn’t the first time he had ever felt as such, but no matter how often the feeling hit him squarely in the chest, he could never get used to it.

But _this_ … Sylvain smoothes his hair back, keeping it away from his face much like how he did when they were children, and Felix _wants_ to snap at the guy—to tell him to stop and to take his hand away, because he’s long since grew out of crying and needing comfort, but Felix cannot bring himself to muster up the words, or even a single complaint.

Felix tells himself he cannot get used to _this_ —although a small part of him, buried deep enough that it was _almost_ nonexistent, already has since long ago.

Yet still, even with his internal struggle, Felix stays right where he is. He does not speak, nor does he move away; he is content enough to lie there on the dock, face tilted toward Sylvain as the guy smoothes his hair back and stares down at him as though they were the only ones left in the world. Vaguely, he recalls falling asleep like this as a child—Sylvain right beside him, a hand brushing his hair away from his face and the smell of grass and wildflowers tickling his nose.

Felix thinks that, for now, perhaps he could allow himself this nostalgic comfort; perhaps he could allow himself to just _be._ For a while, it could just very well be the two of them—the only ones in the world, the only ones in the Monastery. War didn’t rage around them, and whatever troubles the two of them had were nonexistent, for a while.

As Sylvain’s fingertips linger along his temple, it becomes so quiet around them.

And so, with one last lingering look at Sylvain, Felix closes his eyes.

***

It’s when Felix is making his way back to the Monastery from the village a week later that he does something he shouldn’t have.

All things considered, it was better now. Protecting the Monastery had been tough, but it proved to be more than beneficial. The village seemed livelier, with merchants setting up stalls as Squires patrolled the area throughout the day. The more they vend off bands of thieves, the fuller the place seemed to grow. Now, Felix does not see any crows taking flight with fingers in their beaks, nor does he see dried blood on the sides of the stalls.

Slowly, everything was coming together again, much like it had been five years prior.

Felix is almost to the outskirts of the village when he sees a brightly colored package out of the corner of his eye.

He tells himself to keep walking forward—he had no time to dawdle, and little spare coin to hand out so frivolously, and _yet…_ Felix finds himself there, standing in front of a stall that sold various colored candies and sweets that looked so rich it made his teeth ache just looking at them. There was one in particular that caught his eye—that familiar bright red cloth, the dark blue ribbon tying it shut.

“Buying for a lady friend?” the stall keeper asks, effectively pulling Felix from his thoughts.

“…Not exactly,” he says eventually.

“Oh, yeah? Well, either way is fine.” She says it like an offhanded comment, but Felix cannot help but read closely into her words.

He shifts from foot to foot under her bored stare, furrowing his brow as he nods to the candies he hopes to the Goddess Sylvain still likes. “I’ll take those.” Felix rummages through his pockets all the while cursing himself as she plucks a bag from the back row. He exchanges his coin for the candies a bit reluctantly as the stall keeper bids him a good evening.

That is when the feeling hits him—when he is walking through the drapery of the tree limbs, as the sounds from the small marketplace in the Monastery slowly sounds closer, that perhaps he should not have bought Sylvain candy at all.

*

Felix finds Sylvain in the library, strangely enough. It had been the last place he looked as well as his last hope. As he enters, he sees Sylvain hunched over a tome of black magic, and Felix thinks that the guy must have the sounds of his footsteps memorized because Sylvain looks up almost immediately.

“Felix—!”

“Sylvain.” He greets him just as he tosses the little tied cloth full of candies Sylvain’s way. Once he catches them, Felix says, “eat those.”

Sylvain scrunches up his nose, suspicion in his eyes. “What are _these_ , Felix?” He turns the small bag over in his hands, looking down at it curiously as he feels what’s inside. Once he realizes what they were, his face lights up and his smile tugs wider. “Hey! Is this candy? Oh, man, I remember this stall’s stamp! They came back to the village?”

“How would I know?” Felix lies, furrowing his brow. _Think quickly_. He lifts a hand and waves it back and forth, trying for nonchalant, hoping that the action indicates what a complete waste of time this was. “A girl in town gave them to me, but I don’t want them.”

“Right, you don’t like sweet stuff,” Sylvain murmurs, mostly to himself. He tilts his head up, giving Felix a lopsided smile as he shakes the bag. “Thanks. I’ll eat them later. Come on then, have a seat.”

Felix raises an eyebrow, a refusal on the tip of his tongue before he ultimately gives in. As he sits and scoots the chair forward a bit, he wonders just how much _more_ he will be giving in.

“So,” Sylvain starts, dropping the bag of candies next to the tome in front of him. He leans back a bit, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as though a spell of lightning just barely grazed his skin. Sylvain feels his usual mask slip over, and he wonders how much more he’ll be able to keep this up. After all, just weeks prior, he… “What did you need? Want me to help you get closer to the girl?” he asks quickly, halting his train of thought before it could spiral beyond his control. _Bad thoughts, Sylvain. Bad thoughts,_ he chastises. Sylvain digs his nails into the palm of his hand, relishing in the sting of it so he wouldn’t have to think about how Felix’s hair had felt against his fingertips. “Just point her out.”

Felix scowls immediately, _predictably._ Sylvain has to hold back the soft sigh that catches in his throat, because the sight is too much, it’s bound to kill him early. He’d thought he’d die by a sword or perhaps even a spell, _maybe_ an arrow if it was a bad day, but judging by how full his heart feels, and how riddled with thoughts of Felix his mind is, it’s—

“You’re incorrigible…no,” Felix says then, yanking Sylvain from his thoughts. His narrowed eyes glance about the library, and Sylvain is sure it’s supposed to _look_ like he’s disgusted with saying whatever is about to come out of his mouth, but Sylvain knows it’s to make sure nobody else is around, just _so_ he can say whatever is about to come out of his mouth. “I wanted to… thank you for your help in battle. I thought maybe this would suffice. After all, if you hadn’t spotted that enemy ambush, I…would have been killed.”

“So, you gave me someone else’s gift? You regifted a _girl’s_ gift, no less?” Sylvain laughs heartily despite his serious tone. “But, nah, Felix. I didn’t do anything special.” He pauses before deciding to just _say it._ “Friends… they… uh, they help each other out, especially on the battlefield. Just a little give and take, ya know?” he says.

It’s silent for a few moments before Felix shakes his head and opts to stare at the patterns on the table’s wooden surface. Except, his gaze seemed far away; he wasn’t _seeing_ anything, not really. “You never change,” Felix murmurs.

Sylvain tilts his head, confused. The corners of his lips twitch upward as he speaks, slow and deliberate. “Nope. I try to stay on an even keel.”

“You’re _always…”_ Felix sighs harshly, glaring at the table’s surface as he presses his lips together. _Always… always…_ There are many words on his tongue— _many_ words _,_ and some of them might be praises, and some of them would even sound uncharacteristic should he say them aloud, and that is why he doesn’t. How could he live with the embarrassment? Felix is well aware of their childhood—they both have seen each other in the midst of their ups and downs, good days and bad, all the little embarrassing, awkward things in between—but now, _now…_

_We aren’t kids anymore,_ Felix thinks, and he’s so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice the way Sylvain perks up, nor does he notice the way his eyes widen, _nor_ does he notice the look on his face before it is smoothed over, the mask being slapped back on.

“Always?” Sylvain prompts, trying to pretend his heart wasn’t rattling. “Always what?”

Felix can hear his heart beat in his ears, can see the pulsations behind his eyelids when he blinks. He doesn’t want to say anything aloud, doesn’t even want to _think_ them. Felix swallows carefully, shoving the words—the string of confessions, the gooey pile of _fondness_ —back down lest they vomit from him. It wasn’t the time, nor was it the place, but then again, never before had it ever been either. He ends up shaking his head and crossing his arms as he sighs, a long, drawn out noise that leaves him with very little energy.

He thinks, and he thinks, and _he thinks…_

Surely, Sylvain would be the death of him. Surely, the words and the fondness and all the embarrassing things would rot inside of him and kill him from the inside out, and he’d be damned if he _didn’t_ blame Sylvain for it.

“Nothing,” Felix finally says.

Sylvain makes a face, one that Felix cannot decipher. “Come on,” he says, slamming his tome shut and shoving it along with the candies to the side only so he’s able to lean forward, only so he’s able to get as close as the table can allow. Sylvain tilts his head and cocks an eyebrow, trying to egg Felix on. “If you’ve got something to say, then say it.”

Felix can feel the exact moment in which a lapse of judgment occurs. “Maybe I’ll tell you later,” he decides, throat tight. “Maybe I won’t.”

Sylvain’s eyes widen before he schools his expression. He replays Felix’s words, over and over as his skin prickles with anticipation. _Maybe I’ll tell you later. Maybe I won’t._ It was thrilling, beyond exciting, because Sylvain had _seen_ the exact moment in which Felix dropped his guard. “Fair enough,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound as breathless as he feels. He leans back, pleasantly surprised his vision wasn’t blurred as if waking from a dream. “Then, how about I get something to eat while you’re…deciding whatever it is you’re deciding. Actually, scratch that. Come with me.”

“Uh—“

“My treat.”

“That—“

“Honest, my treat,” Sylvain insists, gathering the tome and the little bag of candies before pushing up from his seat. He steps forward, and then he’s right by Felix’s side. “That way, if you decide to talk, I’ll be right there. You won’t be able to just tell me next time that you _wanted_ to tell me and claim you supposedly couldn’t find me all the while telling me it’s _my_ fault for supposedly following any woman I see around, trying to seduce them.”

Felix looks away pointedly. That _had_ been the plan, and it was too short of a notice to try to scramble up a Plan B. He glances up, and immediately softens, and hates the way he just _immediately softens._ Sylvain smiles at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling, his eyes softer than the hues of the sky at dawn; Felix looks away, but it’s too late. He’s warm—he’s sure his ears are red, he’s sure his cheeks are pinkened, and he’s sure his eyes betray every little emotion of adoration he just felt.

“Well?” Sylvain murmurs softly. “What do you say, Felix?”

“Okay,” he sighs, gaze to the ground as he stands from his chair, “just this once…only because you saved my life.”

Sylvain laughs, joyously and boyish, much like he did when they were younger. “All right! Free food, possible conversation, and you know what else?”

“I fear to inquire,” Felix mutters.

“After we’re done, we can hunt down the girl that gave you these candies!”

Felix glares up at him—hard, with murderous intent. He should have known better, should have just _known._ His heart wavers in his chest and for a moment, he feels like quite the fool. When he opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ , he closes it without a second thought, almost immediately. Felix doesn’t wait to see the expression on Sylvain’s face as he quickly turns on his heel, stalking out of the library and leaving Sylvain to stand there.

A moment passes, and then reality catches up.

“It was a joke!” Sylvain calls, motionless for a moment as his footfalls recede slowly. “Felix, I was _joking_!” He yells, and as he hauls out of the library and into the corridor, he almost runs into one of the priests. After a river of hurried apologies rushes past his lips, Sylvain rushes to catch up to Felix, uncaring of how the nuns and maids make disapproving noises as he runs. “Come on, Felix! Let’s just go eat!”

***

He should have told him.

Sylvain had been right there, across from him, smiling as he ate pheasant roast with berry sauce. He had been there, _right there,_ across from him, alive and uninjured and well and _now—_

Felix bites back the bile at the back of his throat as he hurries to Sylvain’s room. He’s injured, but it isn’t really that bad, just a gash curving along his calf. He’s dirty and _grimy,_ half washed in his haste to get out of the courtyard where they were tending to the others, and he knows he owes the healers and maids an apology, knows he shouldn’t have acted like that, not _now,_ of all _times,_ but—

He stops in his tracks and punches the nearest wall, his vision blurred by worry and fear.

Sylvain was hurt. Bleeding profusely, moaning in pain—and Felix could have _sworn…_

_I should have told him,_ he thinks, like a mantra.

Anxiety takes hold of his throat, restricting his airways and he thinks that it is so cruel. He remembers a rush of magic rushing past his ear, and the next, an archer hidden amongst the trees had shouted in pain, dropping from the tree. While the _crack_ that followed seemed to shake the air around them, Felix had instead turned his attention to where the magic had came from.

A heavy rock had dropped to the pit of his stomach; wide eyed, he had opened his mouth to shout at Sylvain, to _watch what was raging around him,_ but the enemy soldier had been quicker, fiercer. Sylvain had tumbled off his horse, and then enemy troops had beelined toward him. His armor had surely already been cracked to hell, chipped by strong swings of weapons and bursts of magic, and a foreboding chill along his spine told Felix it simply wouldn’t last.

Felix remembers rushing forward, the smell of blood and the distinct smell of magic flooding his nostrils. The sounds of steel scraping against steel were all around him, as well as blood curdling screams and disgusting yells of triumph until he’d been there, sword ending the celebrations and giving way to gasps of terror.

He takes a deep breath, fighting off the image that swam behind his eyelids. Byleth had been there, stone faced and somber beside him; Felix had abandoned his blade, shaky hands pressing on the most serious wound Sylvain had received, and… _and…?_

Felix groans, squeezing his eyes shut as he presses the heel of his hands against them. If he remembers right, their professor’s eyes…they had… _glowed_?

“No…” he murmurs, unsure as he struggles against the gears of his mind.

_No,_ Feix thinks. Their professor had been there—Sylvain hadn’t been alone. She _had been there,_ on his left, effectively slicing down the enemy soldier that had tried to knock Sylvain off balance. She had been there, magic twirling in the palm of her hand, face set in a mold of anger and authority as she took down enemy after enemy, calling over her shoulder for Sylvain to keep his eyes sharp. For all her warning, though, he’d gotten stabbed—but Felix cannot recall the amount of blood that seeped from the wound, nor could he recall enemy troops storming toward him, axes and lances and magic raised to injure further, or worse, _kill._

It is then Felix becomes unsure which memory had truly occurred.

As he pushes away from the wall, he tries to swallow down the fear that threatens to strangle him further.

*

“Sylvain.”

A groan sounds from behind the door in response.

Felix narrows his eyes, his palms suddenly clammy. _“Sylvain._ ”

“Felix,” comes a soft murmur. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

That undoes something in him.

“Y—You irresponsible fool!” he snaps, nails biting into the tender skin of his palms. Felix steps forward, glaring at the door, and he cannot help but think that the exact spot he’s glaring at would very well be where Sylvain’s eyes would be, if he were in front of him. “Protecting me like that, _blind_ to what was around you! You’re so weak! And yet, you always… you always…”

“Look,” Sylvain murmurs, voice raspy. Felix can only imagine the expression on his face—brows furrowed, lips pursed. “It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re safe. You can go on living, while I…”

In a fit of anger mixed with irritation, Felix kicks the door. “Stop kidding around!” he yells, throat tight. Fear hardens its hold on him, makes him see double. Felix knows he should calm down, knows he should not let something like this affect him, and yet he cannot decipher which memory happened in reality. Which battlefield had it been? Which injury had Sylvain suffered? “You’re not going to die,” Felix growls regardless of the answer. “I won’t let you.”

There’s a laugh on the other side of the door, and then it’s opening.

Blindly, Felix rushes inside, and barely manages to halt his steps before slamming right into Sylvain.

“Nah,” Sylvain says easily, the soft curve of his lips catching Felix off guard. He looks…well, _whole_ —relatively uninjured, tired as hell. Felix looks him up and down, and then again, before finally settling on his face, where he almost looks… _shy._ “I…I won’t die on you. Promise.” Felix watches as Sylvain extends an arm, nodding to the pristine, white dressing of the wound. It’s then that Felix realizes Sylvain was standing there, in front of him, shirtless. He looks pointedly away as Sylvain says, “you think something like this could kill me? No way.”

Felix hums, thoroughly thrown for a loop.

“A little magic and balms will take care of it, for the most part. After some rest and some light training, I’ll be able to go out there and do it all over again.”

“S-Sylvain!” Felix snaps, glaring up at him.

“Come on, Felix! That was funny.” Sylvain gives him a smile, and he would wink at him, but he really didn’t want to be _throttled._ Though, he couldn’t help but _want_ to; after all, to see Felix so wound up, so worried, so out of his usual demeanor… Sylvain fights the way his smile wants to widen and instead says, “It’s not like you to be so…concerned.”

“I mean…” Felix hesitates, wary. Suddenly, he feels very vulnerable without the bulk of his mantle. “That is… It… that is, had it not…felt entirely different?”

Sylvain tilts his head curiously. “What do you mean?”

Felix doesn’t think as he steps forward; doesn’t think as he reaches out, the tips of his fingers grazing against Sylvain’s stomach. “I mean…” he murmurs, and wonders if it was his imagination, the way Sylvain seemed to tremble at his touch. _Must be,_ Felix thinks, as he witnesses his own fingers shake. “Honestly, I could have sworn…” He shakes his head, and thinks of the Professor’s eyes, and how they had glowed eerie and bright although the sky above had been darkened with threats of a storm. “I thought…I could have sworn you got wounded, right here,” Felix murmurs, tracing a line diagonally across Sylvain’s stomach. “I… I know… I _know_ that I had pressed my hands right _here_ ,” he says, raising his other hand. He sets his hands against Sylvain’s stomach, pressing down gently, and this time, Felix cannot tell himself he imagined the way Sylvain trembled, the way he shivered.

Felix looks up, mouth dry. Sylvain regards him softly, gently; his lips are parted in a barely there exhale, and Felix wonders if it’s the trick of the light, how a flush dusts Sylvain’s face.

“I…” Felix looks down.

“Have you… been sleeping well?” Sylvain murmurs.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” he denies quickly, shaking his head. “No, I’m not, Felix.” Sylvain reaches down only to curl his fingers around Felix’s wrists. He lifts Felix’s left hand to the dressed wound on his right bicep, and keeps the other at his stomach. “It must have been a nightmare,” Sylvain soothes easily, sliding his hands so they’re pressed to the backs of Felix’s. “Feel that?” He moves Felix’s hands a bit, so his palms graze against the dressed wound and his unwounded stomach at the same time. “It was a nightmare, Felix. You confused reality with a nightmare, that’s all.”

Felix nods although he knows that’s _not_ it at all.

“Yeah,” he murmurs finally, brows furrowed. He extracts his hands gently, hesitant, as if one wrong move and Sylvain’s stomach would be torn open. Felix takes an unwilling step back, heat pooling along his neck. He looks away. “I thought…something was off. You’re right. You’ll be fine.” Felix nods once again as if it would shake away the supposed _nightmare_ ; but he cannot stop the image from bombarding his mind, painting vibrant red behind his eyelids. He’d seen it stain his gloves, felt it seep into the fabric. “There’s no way you’ll die from such a small cut. You’re so… reckless and inattentive that I just…” Felix trails off, narrowing his eyes. “That I just, assumed it was worse, I suppose…like it was some form of divine punishment.”

“Hey!” Sylvain narrows his eyes. “That’s _not_ nice. You should be thanking me.”

Felix considers that, lips pursed. He thinks back to the rush of magic, warm and familiar, but deadly to the archer hidden in the trees. “I… am grateful,” he says slowly, nodding as he fights a smile. “You’ve been doing this since we were children. Constantly fooling around, not watching what you’re doing; but then you’d just…show up…right when we needed you most, and you’d…help.”

Sylvain smiles, lopsided and almost shy and in return, the sight seems to wreck something in Felix.

“I’ll admit…” The words leave his mouth before being processed by his brain. Felix knows he should look away—really, he does, _but…_ how could he? In front of him looked something like dawn fading in. His breath catches in his throat, and he has to restrain the way his hands want to reach out and touch. It takes everything in him to stand still. “Seeing you smile like that… I almost want to give you a hug.”

Sylvain’s eyes widen, his mask forgotten.

“Almost,” Felix repeats quickly, averting his gaze.

“A hug?” Sylvain says, uncaring of how astonished he sounds. He takes a step forward, his uninjured arm extending just before he catches himself, the fine hairs all along his body standing on end. _A hug,_ he thinks, fire in his veins, _a hug._ Sylvain could remember the last time they’d hugged—it seemed like lifetimes ago, standing underneath that same old oak tree with silence heavy between them as Felix held on, tight, tighter, to the point where his knuckles were white. “D-Did you get hit on the head? Come on,” he coaxes, taking another step forward. His skin prickles in anticipation as Felix doesn’t move a muscle, his eyes regarding him less warily than Sylvain was expecting. “Tell me you want to hug me again.”

“Wh—“

“ _Come on._ I liked it,” Sylvain sighs, but he’s certain it sounds as though he’s pouting.

Felix narrows his eyes, but Sylvain can see the pink tips of his ears. “I—I won’t be repeating it, you half-wit,” he snarls, but it holds less heat than it usually would have. Felix looks him up and down, one last time, just because he could. “You’re obviously fine,” he says, and turns on his heel. “So, I’ll be leaving now.”

Sylvain forgoes the mask.

Instead, he takes another step forward.

“You know how we grew up together?” he asks hurriedly, a bit breathless.

“Yes,” Felix says slowly. “I _was_ there.”

“Do you remember the promise we made when we were kids?” Sylvain murmurs, eyes glued to the nape of Felix’s neck. He stands there, motionless, but his heart is running rampant in his chest and he feels as though he is on fire, walking on hot coal. For a moment, Sylvain feels _free_ —there is no mask, there is no worry; his heart is there, in front of him, another person. The words catch in his throat, but he doesn’t look away. “About… about how we would be together, even during death? Even after?”

Felix bites the insides of his cheeks, suppressing the rush of emotion. He ducks his head although there was no one in front of him to hide from, squeezing his eyes shut. This was a poor time to get emotional, but Sylvain was good at peeling away his masks, all the barriers.

He remembers. He _does._ How could he forget?

It would be cruel to say otherwise.

“I remember,” he whispers, pleasantly surprised by how even his voice came out.

“We…we made a promise, Felix—that’s why…there’s no way I’d leave you,” Sylvain says slowly, deliberately, “by dying first.”

The implications are not lost, to either of them. It hangs in the air, heavy and sweet, yet so bitter at the same time.

“I know,” Felix sighs, and maybe he lets his guard down just a little bit more, because there is a layer of desperation in his voice. “ _I know,_ ” he says as he turns around, suppressing the urge to flinch; _he’s fine,_ Felix thinks, tearing his eyes away from Sylvain’s stomach. He’d seen it again—flesh torn and blood oozing steadily, _quickly_ ; but then he looks again only to find that it’s gone, but was it, _really?_ “But I’m tired of these close calls.”

“I—yes.”

“You have to stop fooling around,” Felix tells him, desperate and earnest, too tired to care about appearances. There is a small part of him that shouts for him to ease back, to control the emotion, his own tangle of anxieties; but there is another part, a much, much smaller part, that simply lets him _feel._ How long had it been since he behaved like this, in front Sylvain? Felix raises a hand, pressing his index finger into the firm muscle of Sylvain’s chest. “You…you have to take your training more seriously.”

Sylvain nods, his gaze steady.

“Because if you throw away your life, carelessly, _thoughtlessly,_ ” Felix says, his voice slowly rising in volume. He recalls being pressed together, their hearts beating irregularly against each others; he remembers the promise, the whispered words, the tender way Sylvain had kissed the corner of his mouth, to ‘seal the promise.’ He remembers how it felt, even to this day—for what seemed like millions upon millions of years, it had been all he could think about. Felix glares up at Sylvain, the memory rushing back, his heart seeming to explode in his chest for the second time in his life. “We won’t be able to die together.”

“Yes,” Sylvain says immediately, the promise effortlessly rolling off his tongue as Felix drops his hand. “I got it; once I’ve healed, I’ll get my act together.”

Felix hums with a nod. He looks away, turning on his heel once again. “Then, I hope you have a speedy recovery.”

“I’ll see to it,” Sylvain promises, tilting his head curiously as Felix pauses in the doorway.

“…Sylvain?” he murmurs, and something about the softness of his voice has Sylvain breathless.

“Felix?”

With a hand on the doorframe, Felix looks over his shoulder. He can feel how warm his face is, can tell that it glows an embarrassing shade of pink just by the look on Sylvain’s face; but he does not look away. Looking away would be like some sort of betrayal, like the pool of emotion he had just shown to Sylvain would have been for nothing.

His heart is there, another person, enamored by the sight of him and Felix knows that the expression on his face is an exact mirror.

“Thank you,” he says.

Slowly, Sylvain shakes his head, his smile something like dusk. “It’s what I’m here for, Felix.”

**Author's Note:**

> once again, thank you for reading!
> 
> next chapter will be post time skip supports, and a little something extra!
> 
> twt: @kairichirou


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